Passengers will be charged £4 for each piece of hold luggage or £2 if customers have pre-booked hold luggage in advance.

At the same time, Flybe, whose departure airports include Birmingham, Exeter, Belfast, Norwich and Southampton, is knocking £1 off its
fares.

It is also doubling from 11lb (5kg) to 22lb (10kg) the weight allowance for hand luggage on flights and increasing the hold baggage allowance to 55lb (25kg).

Flybe chairman and chief executive Jim French said: “For the first time passengers checking bags on to flights will pay for the service they use rather than the cost being unfairly spread across all people on the aircraft.”

The airline flies 113 routes from 40 airports and French said the scheme would be "revenue neutral" for the average customer.

It said the switch to travellers revealing in advance how much luggage they intended to check in would allow the airline to judge how much baggage it would be carrying, enabling it to speed up turnaround times and cut ground handling costs.

Travellers with hand luggage only who checked in online would be able to go straight through to the departure gate, it said.

Other airlines are studying the move closely as they look to cut down on fuel bills, check-in times - and staff. Ryanair has previously stated its aim to move to carry-on baggage only and is considering ways to "incentivise" passengers to do so. It is introducing a scheme, linked to its web-based check-in facility on "one or two routes" next year, it is reported.

"Baggage check-in is pretty arcane," said a Ryanair spokesman, a hangover from the days of "Lord and Lady Spiffingly-Good not wanting to carry their luggage on to the old cruise liner".

But easyJet, which increased the amount of hand luggage passengers could carry 18 months ago, said it had no plans to introduce charges for checked in baggage.

Times recommends

• 52 brilliant weekend breaks for 2010
• Why are UK airports so child unfriendly?
• Ditch the spas - most detox talk is nonsense